Firstly, the majority of CrossFit gyms are small businesses that are affiliates, not franchises, of CrossFit. As such the membership fees charged are the main source of income, and that is spent on rent and rates, coaching costs and development, replacing broken equipment and buying new equipment, and insurance. There is no big pot of money held centrally that we can dip into when we want or need to.

Secondly, the majority of CrossFit gyms are found in industrial units which tend to feature, among other things, high ceilings, minimal insulation and large open plan areas.

Thirdly, being a member of a CrossFit gym means a lot of different things to a lot of people. A couple of common themes amongst members, both of SCCF and of other CrossFit gyms, include the rejection of 'the easy way out' and the acceptance that real fitness is built with real effort.

With those three things in mind, I'd like to invite anyone with a grasp of simple economics to investigate the costs involved with buying, or renting, space heaters and then subsequently running them in a gym with 8400 square feet of floor space and a minimally insulated ceiling that is over 20 feet high at the lowest points. I'd like to compare the costs involved with heating perhaps the most energy inefficient building in Birmingham to how that same amount of money could be better spent to develop a world class strength and conditioning facility. Would you rather spend money on staff development or on raising the temperature of the room half a degree? Would the gym benefit more in the long term from having a couple of spaces where people can train in front of heaters (until they get too hot and move away), or from spending that money on replacing broken equipment and investing in new equipment?

Fergus (the guy with control of the purse strings at SCCF) reliably informs me that heating such a large and inefficient space would be the fastest way he can think of to bankrupt the company, leaving nothing but memories behind. He also reckons that it’d be slower to bankrupt the company if we just gathered up all the money we make into a large pile and burnt it (it might also be warmer!).

I may be preaching to the converted now, but the solution appears obvious to me. If it's cold when you're heading to the gym - put on an extra layer that you can then take off when you've warmed up a bit. When you arrive at the gym start moving straight away - it doesn't have to be fancy. It could be sitting on a rower for 5 minutes, or seeing how many perfect KB swings you can do in 3 minutes, or working on perfecting some bodyweight movements like pull ups, press ups, lunges and squats, or grabbing a friend and working on some partner carries whilst you do your chatting, or practicing some of the movement progressions that you'll need later on in the class at a lower intensity..... The list is nearly endless.

All the staff are determined to give you the best hour of your day each and every time you walk through the door, all you need to do to help that happen is to avoid the lure of the sofa and embrace the fact that the gym must be a place of hard work as well as fun, especially in the winter time.

In closing, I'd like to draw your attention to this slogan, which I first saw on Afro Brutality's social media: